Smartwatch dementia
If her Polar smartwatch tells her she slept like a baby last night, Sara asks, how can she feel the way she feels this morning?
I’ve had similar experiences with my Apple smartwatch. One morning it will report, on the basis of four different measures, I should be all bushy tailed and ready to rock, never mind I can hardly drag my butt to the teapot. The next morning it claims I had no “deep sleep” at all, and little of any variety. In fact, if I can read what it’s telling me, then congratulations, I must at least still be alive.
But that was a rare morning I actually awakened with the sense of having enjoyed a full night’s sleep, and I’d been looking forward to getting on with the day. “Oh, boy; oh boy; oh boy,” I thought.
Then I looked at my watch. “Fuggedaboutid,” it told me.
Coincidence?
Later this morning Sara exclaims: “How can that be? These scales say I’ve gained two kilos!”
Just last night she returned from a four-day walking meditation in rough country, carrying a heavy pack including her tent and sleeping bag. Is there no justice in this world? And what about the donuts she was planning to have with her coffee?
I have also noticed these digital scales sometimes, if not usually, claim I weigh more than I really do. What gives, eh?
Digital contagion or pandemic paranoia?
Hypothesis: All the gadgetry in this apartment, maybe in the whole world, is being assimilated by the Internet of Things. When one gizmo goes rogue, a contagion effect sets in across the IoT, infecting other hi-tech doodads in the vicinity. Next thing, in our apartment at least, you get epidemic digital dementia.
All that chocolate in the fridge? “That’s another example,” says Sara. “I sure didn’t put it there.”
So the fridge did it. Never mind our fridge isn’t much more advanced than an icebox, and is in no way connected to the IoT.
At least it wasn’t the last I looked.
Are we on a downward slope?
